


Let's Call a Heart a Heart

by lara_aine



Category: Pundit RPF (US)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-18
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lara_aine/pseuds/lara_aine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The last time is in his apartment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Call a Heart a Heart

The last time is in his apartment, amidst rubble and dust, and the smell of wet paint. He strips her in the middle of the living room and leaves her standing there, in plain cotton briefs, feet slightly apart, toenails red against the hardwood floor.

He doesn’t look at her as he shucks his jacket. “Be careful, there might be splinters.”

 

The fourth time only happens in her head.

He’s in Afghanistan, embedded with troops along the Helmand River. There’s half a day between them and his coverage is poor. She gets his emails at three in the morning and reads them on the cold tile floor of the bathroom.

It’s not just sex. He writes about the things he’s seen, the little girl bleeding from a shrapnel wound, her chest rent open, the blood they couldn’t stop. Her mother’s tears.

Ana comes, one hand clenched over the edge of the bathtub, the other in a damp knot between her legs. She stifles her moans against her arm. Rachel sleeps on in the next room.

 

The third time, Rachel eventually cajoles Keith into sharing his season tickets, and Ana appears on his doorstep with a bottle of merlot and a bag of coke.

He has a collection of vinyl, mostly jazz and blues, inherited from his mother, still in their original wrappers. They put on an old Bessie Smith record that crackles with age as Ana sways across the living room in only his shirt. The fabric is as white as her thighs. She laughs and shimmies for him and tries to get him to dance.

He snorts a line off her sternum and fucks her over the back of the couch.

 

The second time happens three weeks after the first. She’s got a guest spot on Larry King and makes it to Time Warner with an hour to spare. He’s in his office, buried under sheaves of paper; memos, ratings briefs, news stories. He smiles when he sees her and tries to clear some space for her to sit.

He rubs his fingers together and they both laugh at all the wrong places.

MSNBC is muted on the television in the corner. He kisses her without closing his eyes. He hardly touches her, just his mouth on hers. His tongue worries her lips and he kisses her like he could fill her out, and temper the hurt.

He’s beginning to show his age; softer drawn edges. She tries to colour in the lines.

 

There’s a restaurant in Soho that Anderson loves. They serve Tequila by the carafe in a small basement room with exposed bricks and poor light. He calls it atmospheric.

And maybe it lowers inhibitions or the dark just makes it easier to see.

The way Keith looks at Rachel across the table even when somebody else is speaking. Anderson can speak English and Vietnamese and a smattering of other random phrases. But he can’t speak this; a language etched in private jokes and secret laughter.

Rachel helps herself to forkfuls of food from Keith’s plate; his hand lingers a fraction too long as he pushes her away.

Anderson catches Ana by the wrist as she leaves the bathroom, grip tight and unrelenting. He gives more away than he thinks.

There’s a moment; a moth beating its wings in a frenzy around the light bulb, she sees how this will be.

Nothing will alter. He’ll still be bruised, a passive aggressive fury that she wonders if Keith provokes on purpose. She’ll walk back to her seat, and Rachel will squeeze her knee under the table as if she’s been missed. She won’t feel guilty; she’s not that kind of girl. But it’ll be like mixing paints as a child, adding more and more colour until the tint is too dark and you can’t get it back again.

She does it anyway. She pushes him back; he yields. They meet somewhere in the middle, between the sink and the wall, her dress hiked up around her waist. His mouth still burns with the heat of the jalapeños.

He feels broken above her, as if he can map out her body and understand. There’s a brittleness to his touch, like he’s afraid to mark her, to emboss her skin with something indelible she can’t scrub away.

She’s not so delicate. She pulls him down and scratches her fingernails along his neck.

It’s a funny kind of revenge Ana thinks, if they never even know.


End file.
